Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. In socialism there will be true democracy but no ‘governments’

For The Socialist Party’s view on achieving socialism through using the democratic system even with its imperfections see the SPGB pamphlet, What’s Wrong With Using Parliament? Available to read online.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/whats-wrong-with-using-parliament/

The chutzpah of the Ukrainian ‘leader’, see below, in providing reasons why elections are cancelled there ‘During this war, our population are against elections and, having an election would require martial law to be lifted. if we suspend martial law we will lose our army, he said, explaining that Kiev would not be able to keep the troops on the front lines otherwise.’

In the UK nine Council elections have been cancelled leaving more than five million people unable to vote in them this year.

The excuse given by Angela Rayner, The Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, is a reorganisation to unitary authorites.

Social media is seeing an increase in people who, as a protest, say they will stop paying their council tax. Whether this ‘protest’ will be as large, or as effective, as the one against the ex Conservative Prime Minister and her attempts to introduce a poll tax, remain to be seen.

As has been said, if voting changed anything they would abolish it.

The only solution for the many ills within a capitalist system, whether it be assault on democratic rights, exploitation or involving innocents in devastating wars is the replacement of the minority benefiting system by socialism.

To quote William Morris;

‘One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.’

‘Holding an election during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be a disaster for Kiev for a number of reasons, ranging from popular disapproval to running the risk of losing its army, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky claimed.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Ukraine conflict, Keith Kellogg, said Washington would like to see Kiev hold presidential and parliamentary votes before the end of the year. Elections have been suspended indefinitely by Zelensky, due to martial law.

According to Zelensky, having an election would require martial law to be lifted. We suspend martial law we will lose our army, he said, explaining that Kiev would not be able to keep the troops on the front lines otherwise.

People will come back home and will have every right to return home, he said, adding that those who do not would still lose their combat capability and morale.

Elections in Ukraine at this time would only benefit Russia, the Ukrainian leader claimed in an interview with ITV News. The topic of elections has been brought up by Russians, he said.

In his interview, Zelensky maintained that Russia only wants to see elections in Ukraine to bring about destabilization. He also claimed that the people do not want to have an election, and that he is absolutely not afraid of them.

During this war, our population is against elections, all people are against it.

According to Zelensky, having an election would require martial law to be lifted. We suspend martial law we will lose our army, he said, explaining that Kiev would not be able to keep the troops on the front lines otherwise.

People will come back home and will have every right to return home, he said, adding that those who do not would still lose their combat capability and morale. Ukraine launched a massive mobilization campaign after imposing martial law, following the start of Russian military operation in February 2022.

Kiev has faced criticism over its heavy-handed approach toward mobilization. Numerous videos have appeared on social media showing Ukrainian conscription officers chasing potential recruits in the streets and subjecting them to abuse.

The mobilization campaign was also marred by widespread draft dodging, corruption, and desertion. Last year, the elite 155th Mechanized Brigade made headlines after around 1,700 members reportedly fled the unit without firing a single shot.

According to Zelensky, having an election with the troops still in the trenches is not fair. He also described it as nearly impossible logistically, with around 8 million Ukrainians now living abroad. Earlier in the interview, he called on Kiev and Western backers to first provide Ukraine with security guarantees and economic aid sufficient to convince people who have fled the country to return.’

Party members and supporters of the SPGB do not wear tinfoil hats. The complete opposite in fact, socialists are very aware of how capitalism operates and the lengths it goes to control the majority who run capitalism on behalf of the minority.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean to say their not out to get you but the SPGB has never worried about the buff file on a Whitehall desk, or wherever the spooks live. As a political party the SPGB has always been fully clear and open about its purpose and aims ever since 1904.

The naïve, it has to be said, stupid individual who thinks the state is there to benefit them, and who says, if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear, is dangerously wrong in that belief. Read the Martin Niemölle poem, First They Came.

They are too many examples to list of states and governments, historical and contemporary, attempting, or being successful, in coercion and clamping down on free speech.

Below are two penlights shining into the dark pit. News sites are reporting ‘legally, the order notice cannot be made public.’

Did someone in the Labour government discover George Orwell?

From June 2024:

EU Commission is allegedly considering a major expansion of surveillance practices in the bloc that could potentially affect every single EU citizen, German news website t-online reported citing confidential draft recommendations it had seen.

A 28-page document, reportedly drawn up by a group of experts on behalf Brussels, lists a total of 42 suggestions of possible tighter surveillance measures in what the media outlet described as “unprecedented privacy limitation.”

The paper, titled: “Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement” demands app developers create “backdoors” for the law enforcement agencies to get to any content they need.

The investigators should be able to circumvent end-to-end encryption in messenger services like WhatsApp or Telegram using some sort of a “general key” provided by the developers, t-online reported. Companies that would fail to meet such demands should face penalties, the document reportedly states.

The list of suggestions is not limited to messaging apps, though. The proposed changes also target the Internet of Things, calling for “greater standardization” of various home apps and devices, including “all forms of connectivity.” The measure is expected to particularly affect home assistants like Google Home, Alexa or the Apple assistant as well as anything up to smart refrigerators, allowing authorities to obtain data collected by such devices.

The paper also calls for the introduction of data retention, according to t-online. A data-retention regulation requires providers of telecommunications and Internet services to store the traffic data on all its users for a specified period of time and to be able to pass them to law enforcement if needed. Such data could include IP addresses, phone contacts or location data.

Germany’s Federal Administrative Court – the nation’s highest judicial body ruling on administrative law cases – had previously classified groundless and indiscriminate data retention to be a violation of EU law and banned it in Germany. Now, this may change if the EU Commission follows through on these recommendations, t-online warned.

The document reportedly justified the proposed mass surveillance approach with the need to “ensure effective prosecution” of cases related to organized crime and terrorism activities and in particular to identified terrorist-attack plots at an early stage.

A digital expert, Anja Hirschel, who is also a member of the German Pirate Party advocating digital privacy rights, warned that such plans represent “an unprecedented… leap right into a fully monitored society.” “Everything we do, where we go and who we communicate with, will be visible at any moment and without any barriers,” she told t-online.

Brussels has not commented on the report about the draft surveillance recommendations.

Last year, a Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld already warned that EU governments were using “totalitarian methods” to spy on journalists. She was commenting on allegations that some EU nations were using the Israeli Pegasus malware to surveil an editor of an EU-based Russian news site.’

From February 2025:

‘The UK government has issued a “technical capability notice” to Apple, compelling the tech giant to create a backdoor to its encrypted iCloud service, the Washington Post reported. The move would enable UK law enforcement and security agencies to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide, according to the newspaper.

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), referred to by critics as the “Snoopers’ Charter,” grants authorities the power to mandate that tech companies permit access to users’ data for investigative purposes. It also makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has made such a demand. The recent notice requires Apple to provide a means for decrypting user data. It is currently protected by end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only users can access their information.

Creating such backdoors could weaken overall security and set a dangerous precedent, according to Daniel Castro, vice-president of the US-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. In a statement he has described the UK’s move as an “unjustified over-reach that threatens the security and privacy of individuals and businesses around the world.”

Last March, in a submissionto the a parliamentary committee, Apple expressed concern that the IPA could be used to force companies to “break encryption by inserting backdoors into their software products.” Apple asserted that it “would never build a backdoor” and would rather withdraw “critical safety features” from the UK market affecting the security of British users’ data.

Ross McKenzie, a data protection partner at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, told The Guardian that the UK order could lead to a clash with the EU, potentially affecting agreements that allow the free flow of personal data between the UK and Europe.

UK security officials argue that encryption can hinder efforts to combat crime and terrorism. “Maintaining proportionate, lawful access to such communications in the face of ever-more prevalent encryption is sometimes our only means of detecting and understanding these threats,” Ken McCallum, head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, stated last October. He believes that “privacy and exceptional lawful access can coexist if absolutist positions are avoided.”

The UK Home Office has declined to confirm or deny the existence of the notice, stating, “We do not comment on operational matters,” according to The Guardian.

Apple has long defended the encryption of its operating systems, notably challenging the FBI in court in 2016 over a demand for a “backdoor” to access the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack. In legal filings, Apple argued that the US government was requesting something it did not possess and that creating such a tool would be “too dangerous.”

The FBI eventually unlocked the phone using an Israeli spy tool, though it reportedly found nothing of value. Later revalations showed that other Israeli spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to hack tens of thousands of iPhones worldwide, targeting journalists, dissidents, and even heads of state.’

Further proof that capitalism sees wars and military conflicts as a profit generating bonanza and cares not for the human suffering it engenders.

‘Washington is sending obsolete weapons to Kiev and replacing them with new systems ordered from private contractors, the Ukrainian leader has claimed

The Ukraine conflict has been a bonanza for the US defence-industrial complex, which has benefited from massive contracts for weapons meant to supply Kiev and replenish domestic stockpiles, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said.

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan Zelensky argued that a significant portion of the billions the US has allocated to Ukraine has in fact circulated back to boost US domestic arms production.

“Part of the money that people in the US talk about was actually financing production in the US,” the Ukrainian leader said. “The companies that were producing weapons [for Kiev] received this money… American companies now have contracts for these arms at the highest prices in the last 50 years because there is such huge demand due to the Russian offensive.”

A significant part of the funding went to “specific companies, specific plants, making profits for specific people. It went toward the salaries of US citizens working in those companies,” he added.

According to Zelensky, the campaign to support Ukraine has also helped the US renew its arsenal, as Washington has in many cases supplied Kiev with relatively obsolete weapons produced in the 1970s and 1980s. He added, however, that Ukraine is grateful for the help, despite earlier criticizing the West for delays and the amount of weaponry being sent.

On top of this, Zelensky argued, “the US received from Ukraine the experience of modern, large-scale land warfare. Americans and Europeans – but Americans in the first place – have all the information… on what in American weapons works and what does not.”

As Marx once said, I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have somebody like me as a member. Not Karl, but Groucho who said that.

In the Marx Brothers 1929 film, The Cocoanuts, Groucho as the proprietor of a failing hotel is challenged by the bellhops, who haven’t been paid for two weeks. They want to be paid. Do you want to be wage slaves, asks Groucho. No, they reply. What makes wage slaves asks Groucho. Wages!

We don’t want to belong to the club that is capitalism. Who, after all, wants to continue to be a wage slave all of their lives? There’s only one answer, socialism. To quote Del Boy, you know it makes sense!

The below is from the Socialist Standard January 1963

‘The value of the commodity human labour power is determined by the cost of reproducing the worker’s expended skill and energy and, also, of reproducing future wage workers. On the average, wages equal this value.

However, in different countries, according to circumstances, the value of labour power varies. In the lesser developed countries we find, as a rule, a lower standard of living and therefore a lower value than in more advanced industrialised areas. Important factors in the more developed areas are a greater consciousness in workers, and organised arrangements for the protection and advancement of their interests.

Wages are not, as some people think, the workers’ share of the wealth they produce. Capitalism is not a national share-holding concern. Let it be clear —Capital is wealth used in the reproduction of wealth in order to realise profit. Variable capital, the wages fund, together with constant capital, are both in existence before the act of production takes place. The workers’ labour power is bought by the capitalists and is used to create wealth. The worker, having worked, has a legal claim to the agreed wage. A sale and purchase have taken place and no question of shares arises. Shares are exclusively for the owners and shareholders, and they come from the surplus value wrung from workers.

Wages must be considered from three aspects. The first, nominal wages, or the actual amount of money paid: second, relative wages, i.e., the proportion of wages paid to the total wealth produced: third is the actual purchasing power of wages—real wages.

The basic conflict between the two classes, capitalists and workers, shows mainly in the first two aspects (wages and profits). Provided that other factors remain constant, an increase in one must cause a decrease in the other. In this, the productive sphere, the social relations are direct between owners and producers (employers and workers) regarding rates of pay and conditions of labour. The amounts of nominal and relative wages are determined here.

We can now consider briefly the conflict between wages and profits. To begin with, let us assume a weekly wage of £10 for a 40 hours week and a rate of exploitation of 100 per cent. An increase of five per cent. in wages would enable the workers, other factors remaining constant, to get 10s. p.w. more for the same quantity of labour. His standard of living is improved and the necessary labour time increased, while surplus labour time is reduced. The rate of exploitation is reduced from 100 to 93 per cent, and the relative wage now represents 55 per cent. of the total product as against the former 50 per cent. A reduction in the working week may also be beneficial for workers; they may obtain the same pay for less work.

The above situation is a most unpleasant one for the capitalist. In the first instance it means an increase of 5 per cent. in his variable capital. It reduces his surplus labour time and his surplus value. The rates of exploitation and profit have also fallen. But although temporarily defeated, the capitalist is undaunted and adamant. He is well aware of his excellent facilities for recovery.

It is quite possible, and it frequently happens, that increased wages or reduced working hours can be offset by a fall in relative wages. This can be brought about, for example, by increased production as a result of better organisation and supervision, etc. The introduction of more efficient machinery and the displacement of labour is another way. An increase in output of 6 per cent. would in some ways offset the five per cent, increase in pay or the reduction of hours. In such conditions, although the nominal wage is higher, the relative wage is lower. More wealth is being produced for slightly less pay.

Other means by which earnings may be increased as distinct from increased rates of pay are, overtime, piece work, or bonus on output systems. These methods entail longer hours of labour, or more intensive labour, or both. Increased earnings in such cases are at the expense of extra sweat and toil and in these conditions workers cannot increase their earnings without increasing the profit of their masters. The working classes’ only gain, if such it can be called, is in having the rates of pay increased or the hours of labour reduced. The struggle between wages and profits is unending and the employers are as a rule better placed.

Social evolution has produced three distinct forms of exploiting societies. In chattel slavery men were owned bodily. In feudalism, the serf, semi-free, was compelled to provide a certain proportion of his labour for the overlord. In both cases the surplus was easy to see. But modern wage labour, unlike the other two, appears to be fully-paid. In all three systems men were, and are, deprived of the fruits of their toil by an owning class. Private ownership of the means of production and control of the ability of men to work has enabled the ruling classes, in all cases, to own the wealth produced.

Slaves, serfs and proletarians all had to obtain food, clothing and shelter. This subsistence differed in amount, quality and kind in the different periods. Today the wage worker is legally “free.” Socially he is compelled to sell his ability to work in order to live. But he may select where and to whom he will sell it—in theory only!

Capitalism is the highest and most efficient form of exploiting society and its wages system conceals to a great extent the legalised robbery of its wealth producers. The separation of labour power from labour is responsible for the appearance that workers’ wages are the full value of their labour. The fact that the value of the embodied labour may be £20 or more, and wages £10 or less, is not so evident.

High wages and low prices, security, and a happy, prosperous and carefree working class, are illusory. A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work is a fallacy. The abolition of capitalism with its wages system is an indispensable task for the workers. Working men and women can only attain their freedom, independence. and control of the wealth they produce. in a Socialist system of society. Production to satisfy human needs as distinct from privileged greed, is the Socialist object.’

John Higgins

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/01/what-are-wages-1963.html

Barriers

Close the borders of the land of the free,

Throw up interlocked fences, build a wall

Or, better still, both, thereby keeping all

Clamouring criminal migrants at bay.

Call out the National Guard, a show of strength

By bristling patriotic warriors.

Next, time to erect tariff barriers

And be prepared to go to any length

To make this a country of succeeders.

 Promise the people they’ll be securer,

Even when everyone’s so much poorer,

Everyone, that is, except the leaders.

It seems the question of security

Is finally solved through ethnic purity.

D. A.

Poem for Roger McGough

by Adrian Henri

‘A nun in a supermarket

Standing in the queue

Wondering what its like

To buy groceries for two.’

Most folk waiting in a checkout queue at a supermarket, or anywhere else, are probably think, ‘kin hell, how much is all this going to cost along with, why don’t they open more checkouts, this queue is ridiculous.

When socialists are in a queue the thought that runs through their mind is, why aren’t the working class working toward socialism because then there would be no queueing up to pay because in socialism there is no money, goods are produced for free access..

Before the shilling for capitalism brigade respond with, oh, so socialists condone theft! Yes we do, but the theft we condone on the measures implemented by the minority capitalist class to exploit the majority class.

‘Retail crime in the UK has reached unprecedented levels, with soaring losses from theft and rising violence against workers, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has reported.

According to its latest annual crime survey, shoplifting in the country has reached an all-time high, with more than 20 million incidents committed last year as of August 31, which equates to 55,000 a day. This cost retailers a total £2.2 billion ($2.7 billion), adding further pressure to the mounting costs retailers already face.

Violence and abuse against retail staff also spiked, with daily incidents exceeding 2,000, up from 1,300 reported the previous year. This marks a more than threefold increase from 2020, when the daily average was just 455. Weapon-related incidents doubled, reaching 70 per day.

“Retail crime is spiraling out of control,” said BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson. “People in retail have been spat on, racially abused, and threatened with machetes.”

The BRC report suggested that many of the incidents were linked to organized crime, with gangs systematically targeting stores across the country, often stealing tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of goods and moving around multiple stores.

“Every day this continues, criminals are getting bolder and more aggressive,” Dickinson warned.

According to the survey, satisfaction with the police response to incidents remains low, with 61% of respondents describing it as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor.’

“With little faith in police attendance, it is no wonder criminals feel they have a license to steal, threaten, assault and abuse,” Dickinson argued.

Responding to the report, police have claimed they have made “significant strides” in tackling retail crime over the past year.

The country’s new Labour government has pledged to address the rise in retail crime through stronger measures.

Latest data by S&P Global shows that retail sales in the UK continued to fall in January after a disappointing Christmas, and consumer confidence has dropped to its lowest level since late 2023.

Employers also slashed jobs at the fastest pace since the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021. Excluding the health emergency, the rate of job-cutting was the highest since the global financial crisis in 2009.

The UK is facing a “stagflationary environment,” where sluggish economic growth coincides with high inflation, said S&P chief business economist Chris Williamson, as quoted by The Guardian.

A separate report issued by the BRC this week showed that British food prices have recorded their sharpest monthly rise since last April, marking an “early sign of what’s ahead” for the economy. Year-on-year, the cost of food in January jumped 1.6% from the previous year.

Dickinson has also warned that retailers would soon face the full impact of £7 billion (nearly $9 billion) in new costs introduced in the last budget by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves. Reeves has announced an overhaul to Britain’s benefits system, to “kickstart economic growth.”’

The Proper Gander column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The High Street was already on the financial skids before the pandemic, which has sped up the shift to online shopping. And these days, going to the shops has the added considerations of facemasks, social distancing, arrows on the floor and sanitisers by the doors, making it more of an ordeal than before. Despite all this, slick, brightly-lit shopping malls are still there to tempt those looking for either retail therapy or a five-finger discount. The latter were the focus of Channel 5’s recent Shoplifters: At War With The Law. This fly-on-the-wall documentary series follows the security guards and their quarries at two interchangeable shopping centres: West Orchards in Coventry and Weston Favell in Northampton. It was filmed pre-Covid 19, so since the cameras left, the guards are presumably on the hunt for people not wearing masks as well as people not paying.

According to the programme’s voiceover, last year, there were 400,000 shoplifting incidents reported nationwide, with the number of those that go undetected estimated to be 20 times higher. Of course, we don’t see any of these, and the shopping centres understandably want the programme to emphasise the chances of getting nabbed. Regardless of this, the show has plenty of tips for would-be pilferers, such as going with a group of friends to distract the guards while items are slipped into pockets elsewhere. And higher-end goods with electronic tags attached can be dealt with by snipping them off with pliers or hiding them in a bag lined with foil so they don’t set off the door alarms.

Watching out for all this are hundreds of HD CCTV cameras, whose footage is relayed back to each shopping centre’s control room. When the guard on duty there sees someone acting shiftily or gets a tip-off from one of the shops, they can radio down to their colleagues to find their target. It’s all quite sad to watch this game of cat-and-mouse, although a couple of the guards get a kick out of their work. ‘I always catch my prey,’ boasts one, ‘that’s why I do my job. I love it’. The guards can only apprehend someone once they’ve left a store, although they cynically assume ‘anybody that’s in the shop is a shoplifter until they go to the till’. Those who are caught are led to a bleak holding room to be questioned and have their bags searched. The police will be called if the person has ‘gone equipped’ with a foil-lined bag or pliers, or if what they have stolen is valued at over £200. If the goods are worth less than this the police won’t usually be involved and instead, a year-long ban from the shopping centre is issued. If the accused says they have no ID, they’re asked to bring up their social media profile instead. Their name, address and date of birth are taken, as is a mug shot for the database. If they are seen to return to the centre, they will be trespassing and the police will be called. The guards have had plenty of practice with the procedure: the West Orchards team ‘take down’ up to ten shoplifters a day, as they put it.

The programme-makers blur out the faces of the people caught, which also has the effect of emphasising how dehumanising the need to shoplift is, and the rituals around it. Some of the people featured have been recruited by gangs, and probably have very little choice in the matter. They tend to be from Eastern Europe, not able to claim benefits and without much chance of securing better paid work, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation from organised gangs. Most of the value of any successfully shoplifted goods is likely to go to the gangmasters, with those who take the risks receiving little back; a more extreme version of mainstream employment. These gangs tend to move between areas once they become too well-known in one place. Nearly three quarters of shoplifting in West Orchards is carried out by a small group of local repeat visitors. Many of these are homeless, with or without a benefit claim, either stealing to get enough food or to fund a drug habit. One man speaks to the camera crew after he’s thrown out for the umpteenth time: ‘I’ve got nothing. I ain’t got no-one. But … I’ve got the shops.’ The guards tend to treat those who are pushed into shoplifting by poverty with some sensitivity, as long as they don’t get lairy.

But Shoplifters: At War With The Law doesn’t want us to feel too sympathetic towards people who steal. Its voiceover makes the point that shoplifting ‘takes more than £2 million out of tills every day’, and that to make up for these losses shops have been ‘ramping up prices for millions of honest shoppers’. It’s easy to claim that theft raises prices, but this falsely implies that retailers would lower prices below the market rate if people stopped stealing, which of course no retailer would ever do, so it just scapegoats people who shoplift and provides an alibi for inflated prices. The costs of security measures and stolen items do impact on the profitability of goods to some extent, so the chain store owners will be keen to clamp down on shoplifting. But a few pinched bottles of perfume or boxes of chocolates are nothing compared to the billions of pounds creamed off by owners and shareholders.’

Mike Foster

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/09/ive-got-nothing-i-aint-got-no-one-but.html

COMMUNISM: AN IDEA THAT IS REVIVING (Zoom)

Winning the global race for growth?

“I’m Backing Britain” was a brief patriotic campaign, which flourished in early 1968 and was aimed at boosting the British economy. The campaign started spontaneously when five Surbiton secretaries volunteered to work an extra half-hour each day without pay to boost productivity and urged others to do the same. The invitation received an enormous response and a campaign took off spectacularly; it became a nationwide movement within a week. Trade unions were suspicious of, or even opposed to, the campaign, considering it as an attempt to extend working hours surreptitiously and to hide inefficiency by management.

The campaign received official endorsement by the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, but it found that being perceived as government-endorsed was a mixed blessing. The Union Flag logo encouraged by the campaign became highly visible on the high streets, and attempts were made to take over the campaign by Robert Maxwell, who wanted to change its focus into an appeal to ‘Buy British’, but the campaign’s own T-shirts were made in Portugal. After a few months without any noticeable effect on individual companies or the economy generally, interest flagged amid much embarrassment about some of the ways in which the campaign had been pursued and supported.

It has come to be regarded as an iconic example of a failed attempt to transform British economic prospects.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Backing_Britain

‘Britain’s factories suffered the deepest slump in orders since the first Covid lockdown and are braced for worse to come as demand from customers in the UK and overseas withers.

Businesses are slashing investment amid rising taxes and red tape, according to the Confederation of British Industry’s survey of the manufacturing sector.

“Manufacturers have entered the New Year in a grim mood. Confidence has evaporated over the last three months as orders have dropped,” said Ben Jones, economist at the business group.

“A fall in domestic deliveries comes amid widespread concerns over the impact of the increase in National Insurance contributions, minimum wages and changes to employment law on firms’ operating costs.”

Much of the global manufacturing sector is struggling with German industry gripped by high energy prices, weak demand and stiff competition from Chinese car manufacturers, while China itself is also battling against an economic slump caused in part by a property crisis.

As a result British factories have few orders from overseas.

“Export prospects appear worse than at any time since the pandemic, reflecting a slowdown in overseas demand and reports of ongoing difficulties securing supply contracts with customers based in the EU,” said Mr Jones.

He called on the Government to inject fresh confidence into the economy.

“Several firms noted concern that negative sentiment risks becoming self-fulfilling,” said Mr Jones.

“The government can play a role in re-booting confidence by sending clear signals of intent on policies that could support the manufacturing sector, notably delivering an industrial strategy that helps the UK win the global race for growth, matching skills to economic needs, and accelerating our energy transition and resilience.”

The share of businesses reporting falling orders outweighed the proportion with rising demand by a margin of 20 percentage points, the worst since July 2020.

Expectations for the coming quarter are even worse, with the net balance anticipating growth in orders falling to minus 32pc, the lowest since April 2020, at the start of the first Covid lockdown.’ The Telegraph

The below is from the    March 1991 issue of theSocialist Standard

‘Since its evolution out of feudalism, the capitalist system of society has ensured that there has been a long-term expansion in the productive capacity of the world. TVs, computers, weapons capable of mass wreckage at one stroke—all these things that were once unthinkable have become basic features of life, at least in the more developed areas of the planet where capitalism has been dominant for many decades, and in some instances, hundreds of years. Although capitalism broke through the fetters placed upon production by the feudal system and has expanded the forces of production to an unprecedented degree in the years since, the expansion of productive capacity and output under capitalism has never proceeded in a straight line. Notions of steady growth and constantly increasing well-being owe more to the rhetoric of politicians than the actual reality of capitalist development.

As a system, capitalism grossly underuses the technology and potential for production that it has helped develop. On one level, this can be seen by the growth in employment of people who are not engaged in intrinsically useful activity—bankers, accountants, insurance workers, armed forces personnel and so on. But even when capitalism can be said to be working at “full capacity”, with expanding output, growing productivity and booming sales, a period of “under-use” is always around the corner.



Falling output

Capitalism in Britain has reached just such a turning point. The last few years have seen fairly steady growth, with rising productivity and increased investment in those expanding sectors of industry that were making the headlines in Thatcher’s last years in office—particularly microelectronics and information technology. Much of that growth and expansion has now been halted.



This has not, of course, prevented the present government from arguing that the downturn in economic performance is just a “blip”. Only in November 1990 was John Major (when Chancellor) prepared to admit tentatively that Britain is in recession. The government currently defines a recession as being a situation when there is a negative growth rate for two successive quarters, but this “official” definition hardly matters to the thousands being thrown on to the dole queue or the thousands of others forced into bankruptcy.



Britain, in common with a number of other countries, is now in a situation where industrial production is falling and unemployment is rising. Although the official unemployment statistics have been doctored to the extent that they have become virtually meaningless as a measure of the actual level of unemployment in Britain, they do at least indicate trends—and the current trend is up. Manufacturing production has been falling since April last year and in the three months to November fell by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three-month period (Independent on Sunday,  27 January).



So far as governments and politicians are concerned, falling rates of growth and high levels of unemployment are signs that something has “gone wrong”. When things start to go wrong for capitalist governments they often look for a scapegoat— like some hapless (ex-)Minister whose irresponsibility and recklessness is blamed for having brought the period of growth to an end. In Britain this role has been allocated to former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, a man previously described as “quite brilliant” by Thatcher and Major. But governments taking the credit when output is expanding and unemployment is low, and finding a scapegoat when things get rough is based on the mistaken assumption that the capitalist business cycle results from the policies they pursue. They may like to think that they are in control of the economy and that when things go wrong they can put them right again with the correct policies, but this is a fantasy.

Over—expansion

What governments fail to realise is that an economic recession is not an example of capitalism “going wrong” because of some dreadful ministerial error. Economic recessions with stagnating production, growing unemployment and a further slide into poverty are entirely normal—and necessary—features of capitalist development. This is because of the inner logic of the capitalist system’s drive towards expansion.



The conditions for the development of an economic recession are present even when the capitalist system is in a period of boom, or relative prosperity. One thing that is immediately noticeable is that the operations of capitalism are not planned at the level of the whole economy. Decisions about investment are made by thousands of competing enterprises operating independently without social control or regulation. This means that when business is booming and when profits and growth rates are high “over-investment” by some enterprises will inevitably occur. In pursuit of future profits they expand their productive capacity beyond what the market which they are producing for can absorb.



A particular industry over-investing and expanding its productive capacity beyond the limits of market demand in this way is the usual cause of an economic crisis and subsequent depression. If capitalist growth was to be achieved in a controlled manner, eliminating booms and slumps, then growth would have to be balanced in each sector of industry. But the growth of an industry is not linked to the demands of other industries—its growth is determined by the expectation of profit, and this inevitably leads to a disproportion in investment and a disproportionate expansion between the various branches of production.



When an industry has over-produced for its particular market, this will have a knock-on effect for firms operating in other sectors of the economy. For instance, if an enterprise is no longer able to sell the commodities it has produced on the market at a profit, production will be cut back thereby slowing output. This will provoke a chain reaction as the enterprises’ suppliers will no longer be able to sell all their products either, which will in turn affect their suppliers and then their suppliers’ suppliers, and so on. Such an overproduction for selective markets therefore only has to appear in a few key industries for a crisis to break out and spread—reducing overall growth rates and increasing unemployment. And it all arises out of the general anarchy of production inherent in the capitalist system.



Boom—slump cycle

After a period of generalised stagnation and high unemployment, capitalism will be able to move out of the slump phase of its trade cycle. Although a recession has devastating consequences for the working class, no slump is permanent and once many of the weaker capitals have gone to the wall—with their assets being sold off cheaply to their competitors—the prospects for investment and expansion improve again. Capital depreciation, coupled with reduced interest rates caused by reduced demand for money capital, and lower real wage rates in a recession, mean that the prospect for making profits improves and industries begin to expand once more, taking on more workers. The cycle then begins all over again. As Marx pointed out in the last century:

The factory system’s tremendous capacity for expanding with sudden immense leaps, and its dependence on the world market, necessarily gives rise to the following cycle: feverish production, a consequent glut on the market, then a contraction of the market, which causes production to be crippled. The life of industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation. (Capital.  Volume I. page 580, Penguin edition).

Now that capitalism has become a world system the “sudden leaps” of production referred to by Marx are not nearly as immense as they were in the capitalist system’s historical ascent when whole continents of the Earth still had to be brought into the “factory system” with its wage-labour and capital relationship. Indeed capitalism, having raised the forces of production to a level where a society of abundance is feasible, has outlived its usefulness for humankind, and its cycles of boom and slump are a testament to its inherent inability to utilise resources efficiently. Capitalism can only advance so long as there are periods of regression when workers are made redundant in increasing numbers. when growth stagnates and when poverty spreads—not merely in the “developed” areas of the world but in the weaker capitalist states also, where the effects of the capitalist trade cycle are often felt hardest.



Most importantly of all, there is nothing that politicians can do to eliminate the boom-slump cycle—it will be around as long as capitalism itself. Capitalism cannot be efficiently planned as anarchy of production and uneven development are at the very heart of the system. All attempts at planning capitalism have ended in disaster—most notably in state capitalist countries like Russia and China where production seems to be in an almost chronic state of stagnation and where unemployment has. at least until recently, been masked by overstaffing.



The only way to take the abundant resources of the Earth and use them in an efficient manner is to establish a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control, where articles of wealth will be produced solely for use and not for exchange on a market with a view to the profit of a minority. Only then will crises, booms and slumps be a thing of the past and only then can production be geared to satisfying the needs of the inhabitants of the Earth.’

Dave Perrin

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